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Miller Wins Gold in the Super Combined

WHISTLER, British Columbia — During a United States ski team training camp last November in Colorado, Bode Miller spent an entire lunchtime finding fault with the way his teammates had skied that morning.

“He didn’t like anyone’s line down the race course,” Ted Ligety said later, laughing and rolling his eyes. “He didn’t like his line. We get kind of used to it: Nothing is ever perfect to Bode.”

Three months later, Miller rose at 5:45 a.m. Sunday to prepare for the men’s Olympic super combined. Ligety, who is sharing a Whistler condominium with Miller, saw his roommate limp to the bathroom.

“He was pretty banged up,” Ligety said, aware that Miller had a nasty crash in slalom training last week, a tumble of 35 yards down an icy pitch.

Achy and looking exhausted, Miller was in seventh place after the downhill run, the first half of Sunday’s event. At lunch, Miller’s teammates said he was all but speechless — nearly a first. In the afternoon, Miller charged through his slalom run, taking a big early lead. He gave some of it back, then held on to a slim margin.

Photo

Bode Miller, center, won his first Olympic gold medal. Ivica Kostelic of Croatia, left, won silver; Switzerland’s Silvan Zurgriggen took bronze.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“The last 100 yards, I couldn’t even see the gates,” Miller said. “I was skiing on fumes.”

After his last challengers could not defeat him, Miller, a contrarian of Olympic caliber, assessed the improbable outcome, his first Olympic gold medal performance.

“I think what he means is his résumé is perfectly complete,” said Ligety, the defending Olympic champion, who finished fifth. “There is nothing left Bode hasn’t won — world championships, World Cup overall titles, Olympic medals of every color.

“Perfect? Whatever, dude. Perfect? It was today.”

An unusually euphoric Miller celebrated a milestone achievement few saw coming two weeks ago, winning the super combined to crown a deep catalog of ski racing achievements. With his three Olympic medals in three races at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics — and five Olympic medals in a career — Miller has taken his place among the greatest ski racers in history. The only knock on his credentials had been that for all his World Cup victories (32) and all his astounding versatility (four world titles in four different events), he had never won an Olympic event.

Miller’s winning combined time, 2 minutes 44.92 seconds, took care of that criticism. He has also become the first American Alpine skier to win three medals in one Olympics. And he has two events left.

Two slalom specialists followed Miller onto the podium as Ivica Kostelic of Croatia won the silver medal, just 0.33 of a second behind Miller, and Silvan Zurbriggen of Switzerland was the bronze medalist with a combined time that trailed Kostelic by only seven-hundredths of a second.

Miller has strenuously and relentlessly preached a philosophy that values the quest for perfection of performance rather than a quest for results and medals, but on Sunday, in his glee, he blurred the line repeatedly. He let slip some very un-Miller like comments.

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Bode Miller, who has 32 World Cup victories and 4 world titles in four different events, had never won an Olympic event before Sunday. “It was absolutely perfect,” he said of his runs.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I wanted to win, I needed it,” he said in the finish area moments after Aksel Lund Svindal, Miller’s last challenger, skied off the slalom course with about 100 yards to go. “The way I executed, the way I skied, is something I’ll be proud of for the rest of my life. It feels amazing.”

Having been so roundly criticized for his uninspired performance during the 2006 Games — a detachment Miller has acknowledged at these Olympics — Miller faced a long series of questions Sunday about what had made these Olympics different.

Always thoughtful, if not overly so, Miller answered that as the multiple medal favorite and poster boy for Olympic hype, he found nothing pure about his 2006 quest. But Miller would not speak of redemption or blame those who criticized him.

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“Somebody asked me if these three medals were revenge,” he said with a laugh. “And I said: ‘You mean revenge against myself?’ ”

Miller did not look as comfortable in the super combined downhill as he had as the bronze medalist in the men’s downhill last week. He blamed an injury to his left leg from the training crash and general wear and tear. At the same time, Svindal, who also came into Sunday’s race with two Olympic medals in two races, looked strong, skiing the downhill portion 0.76 of a second quicker than Miller. But Kostelic, Zurbriggen, Austria’s Benjamin Raich and Switzerland’s Carlo Janka and Didier Defago lurked in the top 10.

Kostelic skied before Miller and took the lead. At the time, it did not look good for Miller, who has struggled with the slalom for several years and has a long recent history of unfinished slalom races. But with precision, aggression and even uncharacteristic caution at the right moments, Miller bested Kostelic, then watched as one by one, the other contenders made just enough mistakes to stay behind him.

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The American Ted Ligety, the defending Olympic champion in the super combined, finished fifth. He is Miller's roommate in Vancouver.Credit
Photographs by Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I skied well but not well enough,” said Kostelic, who was the silver medalist in the combined at the 2006 Turin Olympics.

Svindal said, “I skied as fast as possible because to beat Bode I had to take risks.”

Miller will go for a fourth 2010 Olympic medal Tuesday in the giant slalom. The slalom follows Saturday.

A version of this article appears in print on February 22, 2010, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Miller Is Perfect, and His First Gold Is Pure. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe